Tech

Private prison giant under fire for pressuring Georgia to keep immigrant detainee’s death report sealed

How a private prison company silenced the Georgia Bureau of Investigation from releasing details about an immigrant detainee’s death.

What to watch for when Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies in Congress

The mild-mannered exec who skipped a U.S. Senate panel two months ago will face a House panel with bipartisan outrage over many of the company’s practices. His strategy will likely be to provide platitudes, not specifics.

Microsoft’s Surface headphones: Not Bose killers, but worth a listen

For a few weeks, I used the new Surface noise-canceling headphones side by side with my go-to Bose QuietComfort 35s. Here’s what I learned.

What a 19th-century French novel tells us about Jeff Bezos and Amazon

Meet Emile Zola’s Octave Mouret—a Bezos-like merchant/innovator created 111 years before Amazon sold its first book.

Meet the Tumblr castaways trying to save its adult content from oblivion

Tumblr posters of porn and kink fear a ban on naughty content will eviscerate not only their blogs, but the communities they’ve built on the networks.

Google’s Pixel Slate: Great Chromebook, not-so-great iPad/Surface rival

With an optional keyboard and pen, this device wants to split the difference between tablet and laptop. But the meshing of Chrome OS and Android needs work.

Net neutrality could face a powerful foe in Trump’s nominee for attorney general

Willam P. Barr, who was nominated today, has long opposed net neutrality rules, which would be welcome news for major ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast.

Rights groups and tech workers unite to swat down Google’s Dragonfly

The collateral damage of Tumblr’s porn ban

Tumblr’s new NSFW content policy will hurt those with diverse gender and sexual identities who use the site to learn about themselves and find each other.

From the View-Master to Sears trash cans, this man designed our world

The man who sent “the most famous email in history” still has plenty of questions

Rob Goldstone, the British music publicist who sent the infamous email to Donald Trump Jr. that set up the Trump Tower meeting, still has plenty of questions about what really happened.

Despite a surge of tech activism, Clarifai plans to push further into government work

As some tech companies face a reckoning over work with the Defense Department and ICE, the AI startup known for its work on the controversial Project Maven plans to expand its work for federal agencies and just launched a new subsidiary, Neural Net One.

Help paying off your student loans is a great perk–if you can get it

As Americans grapple with $1.7 trillion in debt, many employers are offering help in the form of financial counseling and refinancing programs.

Exclusive: Amazon’s Alexa begins crowdsourcing answers to common questions

Why going public before Uber could give Lyft an advantage

Business-app automation kingpin Zapier has its eye on consumers

With 3 million users and $50 million in annual revenues, the company is doing well at work. Now it wants to take automation mainstream.

Alexa just got better at picking music for you

Amazon Music is leaning on Alexa to remember your listening habits and nail down the right playlist. But don’t expect perfection just yet.

What happens when you publish your therapy transcripts?

Friends With Secrets is a new media project where the creators engage in radical vulnerability.

Facebook tries to put out its latest dumpster fire, this time over Mark Zuckerberg’s emails